Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Quotes

I felt that a number of people might have questioned my loyalty, but I continue to be a patriotic American.

As brilliant an individual that Michael Jordan was, he was not successful until he got with a good team unit.

When the line started to blur between the fans and the players, sometimes things can get ugly.

I'm not going to disappear.

I listen to jazz mainly. Mainstream jazz.

When I was a kid, no one would believe anything positive that you could say about black people. That's a terrible burden.

I am highly offended by the total lack of acknowledgement of my contribution to Laker success.

I think Kwame will be an asset to the Lakers.

I think black Americans expect too much from individual black Americans in terms of changing the status quo.

Black people don't have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted.

You play with your soul as well as your body.

Alexander Hamilton realized that warfare was part and parcel of human nature, and it's something we had to prepare for.

I've had a desire to coach for years. This was something I felt I should do.

People still cheat on their wives, that hasn't fallen out of fashion. We all speak of it badly, but it has not fallen out of fashion.

I feel that there has been progress made since I was a boy on matters of race, but we have a long way to go.

I've had enough success for two lifetimes, My success is talent put together with hard work and luck.

The game has basically not changed since I ended my career.

I wanted to play baseball!

The transition was difficult. It's hard to stop something that you've enjoyed and that has been very rewarding.

Culture and politics were inseparable [in the Sixties], which gave a soundtrack to political awareness and activism.

I hope to be involved in a successful movie script.

I'm still my parent's child, I'm still me, but I made a choice. I evolved into Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I think it has to do with evolution.

I think the NBA will certainly survive without Michael Jordan.

I had a moment like that with Wilt (Chamberlain). He knocked me out of bounds, I came back and faked him, came across the middle and dunked on him.

I read that Hollywood wanted to film Fences years ago with a white director, but [August] Wilson refused. He thought that the director needed to have lived the culture of black Americans.

In the Western standards of modesty, there are different guidelines.

After practice, I would have to go back to the dorm and take a nap.

Michael Jordan and Magic and myself, all learned how to play the game in college programs that emphasized the team.

I have been coaching recently. I coached high school basketball in Arizona, and I hope that more opportunities become available.

I've never been a person to share my private life, but I can help save lives.

This is what I would have done if I had to have a real job: I would have been a history teacher.

Even when there are adverse circumstances, I try to do my job. And I usually do.

If not shown appreciation, it gets to you.

I totally alienated some reporters as I retreated.

I was a baseball fan myself, I wanted to play baseball.

We all had a lot of fun making the film ["Airplane" ], but there weren't a lot of outtakes or cracking up because we all were focused on doing our jobs in a professional manner.

I was just starting out acting [doing "Airplane"] and wanted to be taken as a professional, not as an athlete doing a cameo.

The lifespan of most professional athletes is relatively short, and most have no preparation for doing anything after their career ends, which it could in an instant.

The only reason is that I hadn't seen The Modern Jazz Quartet perform live and a live performance is often where the real experience of jazz takes place. I'm not familiar with the Boswell Sisters.

[Coaching] is a difficult job which everyone who owns a TV thinks they can do better at.

Today's youth are told to get rich or die trying and they really shouldn't take that attitude forward with them.

Sports and entertainment are the only places where inner-city kids see themselves being able to succeed. Their intellectual development is something they don't relate to.

My grandfather and my uncle both died from colorectal cancer, my dad almost died from it and I have the gene for it.

I have always thought that writers come with any variety of attributes. Some are capable and some aren't.

We can learn from mistakes of others, whether they're kings or our parents. When we do learn those lessons, we're better equipped to make our own dreams come true.

I feel like I've always been a full-time historian, but nobody knows it.

I think people that are, you know, voting in the blind are doing a disservice to America by not being better informed.

I got all A's and was hated for it; I spoke correctly and was called a punk.

I want people to understand that I intend to continue living and doing all the things that I love to do up until the end. And the end is by no means rushing up on me.

I don't know if I was the baddest. People kind of saw me in that light.